Tornadoes batter Midwest

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Kurt Voigt, Associated Press

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 22, 2011

Photo: Mark Schiefelbein, AP

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Emergency personnel walk through a neighborhood severely damaged by a tornado near the Joplin Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo., Sunday, May 22, 2011. A large tornado moved through much of the city, damaging a hospital and hundreds of homes and businesses. less

Emergency personnel walk through a neighborhood severely damaged by a tornado near the Joplin Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo., Sunday, May 22, 2011. A large tornado moved through much of the city, ... more

Photo: Mark Schiefelbein, AP

Tornadoes batter Midwest

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(05-23) 04:00 PDT Joplin, Mo. --

A huge tornado blasted its way across southwestern Missouri on Sunday, flattening several blocks of homes and businesses in Joplin and leaving residents frantically scrambling through the wreckage.

Missouri authorities said they could confirm that people were killed by the storm, but the toll was unknown late Sunday.

Hundreds of windows were blown out of St. John's Regional Medical Center, where a few moments' notice gave staff time to hustle patients into hallways before the tornado struck the multistory building. All were later evacuated into the parking lot to be moved to other hospitals.

The same storm system spawned twisters along a broad swath of the Midwest, from Oklahoma to Wisconsin. At least one person was killed in Minneapolis.

Emergency management officials rushed heavy equipment to Joplin to help lift debris and clear the way for search and recovery operations. Gov. Jay Nixon activated the National Guard and declared a state of emergency. Schools in the disaster zoned were flattened or severely damaged.

Phone communications in and out of the city of 50,000 people about 160 miles south of Kansas City were largely cut off. Travel through and around Joplin was difficult, with Interstate 44 shut down and streets clogged with emergency vehicles and the wreckage of buildings.

Jeff Lehr, a reporter for the Joplin Globe, said people were walking around the streets outside trying to check on neighbors, but in many cases there were no homes to check.

"There were people wandering the streets, all mud covered," he said. "I'm talking to them, asking if they knew where their family is. Some of them didn't know, and weren't sure where they were. All the street markers were gone."

In Minneapolis, city spokeswoman Sara Dietrich said a death was confirmed by the Hennepin County medical examiner. She had no other immediate details. Though the damage covered several blocks in Minneapolis, it appeared few houses were totally demolished. Much of the damage was to roofs and porches that had been sheared away.

In Wisconsin, the mayor of La Crosse declared a state of emergency Sunday after a severe storm hit, tearing roofs from homes. No one was seriously injured.

Sunday's storms followed a tornado Saturday night that swept through the small eastern Kansas town of Reading, killing one person and destroying at least 20 homes. The victim, Don Chesmore, 53, was in a mobile home that overturned when the storm barreled through. Five others were injured.